


Til the Regime Falls

by Headspacedeficit



Series: How far can you carry this? [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-20 00:10:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5985766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Headspacedeficit/pseuds/Headspacedeficit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint tries to talk himself through a pre-panic attack while looking like he's paying attention to the SHIELD newbies. He reflects on his relationship with Natasha.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Til the Regime Falls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Naeshira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naeshira/gifts).



> naeshira.tumblr.com prompted me with "How far can you carry this?" and whichever OTP I liked. The reason it took so long to fulfill the thing wasn't because I had writer's block but because I ended up with a couple ideas and no idea how to write them all.

                The flash of Tasha’s teeth catches his eye from his place along the training room wall.  Movie star white framed by brilliant red ( _sanguine Barton_ ) whose gloss she lets him kiss away before breakfast.  It's the smile that gets him.  It's playful and wide and sharp in a way that can only mean she's found pretty prey among the new recruits: someone who's heard of Black Widow rumors but not Agent Romanova's record.

 

Black Widow kills fools and Agent Romanova doesn't suffer them.

 

                He wonders then, in the dark of night or when she's away on missions or leaning against training room walls or any time at all, what she's doing with him.  The little voice that sounds suspiciously like Denier hisses, " _Can you carry this?"_ He forces himself to breathe through it, as much as his snipers training lets him.  Tasha notices and makes eye contact from the mats.  He flashes one of his lopsided, goofy smiles even though it falls flat; too occupied with pushing air in and out of his twitching chest.  The next trainee hits the ground breathless to a carefully blank facade hovering over them, pinned to the mats for just a moment longer.  The next two newbies don't go down quite as hard but they do so with their backs to him.  A shiver runs down his back from Tasha's steady surveillance and he can't tell if that's good or bad.

                It's cruel of him, but he wonders sometime, when the regime collapses, will she carry him along?  He thinks he knows the answer.  Lovers come and go but Natasha has survived too much to let herself take that kind of fall.  She's been through the Red Room and Cold War and assignments too deadly for anyone else.  She's done the salt and burn to her past and tied up every tendril of red that comes creeping out of her ledger.  Natasha is too much a fighter to make that kind of play: not for him, not for anyone else, only maybe for a world innocents.  Best he can hope for is place in her heart in the aftermath.

                He loves her, he knows.  Loves her with his broken, insufficient all.  He thinks she loves him as well, even though she'd never say it: never whisper it to him as the world falls apart; never tell him when the chips are down and there's nowhere to hide; when the almost-died is replaced with almost-made-it; when his fragile mortal self finally gives out on her.

                He knows she says it in ways that can't be heard.  But that's okay.  He's used to puzzling out words he can't hear.  And so he says to the voice that whispers to him, insistent and unrelenting, " _Can_ _you carry this [relationship]? Can you carry [yourself]?" "Can you carry [her]?"_

 

**No.**

 

                He admits "No."  He can because he knows that when the fist of worry lets up from around his heart, Tasha will be there.  Tasha with her strong hands and powerful will.  Him with his quick eyes and set jaw.  She will be there and he will be there and together they will carry these things.  Because it takes two of them to carry out a partnership.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I ship these two romantically and, I guess, professionally. They're one of the only ships that I prefer a romantic relationship for instead of platonic. I want them to grow old together, flicking popcorn at each other from across a room or going down in a world saving blaze of glory. I want, just after their 30th anniversary, Natasha smiling sharp and mean at the people who make comments about Clint's age and gold digging because of the two of them, she's that much older and likely to live that much longer. I want Clint who hides his hearing aids when they get caught undercover and communicating with Tasha in Russian Sign.


End file.
